I'm looking for motivation to work harder at learning French and was wondering if there are any classic programming books with original editions (not translations from English or German -- ideally even one not available in English) written in French. This has worked very well for my brother-in-law to learn English. Sadly for him, most books on popular programming and sysadmin topics are written in English. He's lucky to even get a translation. But as a result he knows English much better than I know French. One of these days he'll probably pass me on knowledge of English too.

My number one interest right now is Lisp. Something on Smalltalk, Eiffel, or Forth might also interest me. Otherwise maybe something on compilers (introductory), programming languages and type theory (also introductory), AI, operating systems (programming them not adminning them), algorithms or data structures would be good. I have a French book on Objective Caml, but I haven't dug into it yet. I think I won't try to learn objective caml until I learn Lisp well, so it's not providing the motivation.

Almost all technical documentation is available in English, and translations may be inaccurate.. learning English should be a priority if you want to learn a programming language or comprehend specifications.

I'm not saying there isn't any original non-English content, they're just few and far between.

Almost all technical documentation is available in English, and translations may be inaccurate.. learning English should be a priority if you want to learn a programming language or comprehend specifications.

Perhaps I wasn't clear or my writing was poor enough for you to think I'm not a native speaker. I'm the converse. I'm the guy in the sea of English language books casting about for a French book to practice French with. It being about programming would put the wind in my sails since that's my first interest, or that's my theory.

I think that's a very good strategy to learning a language better. I can speak some French and have similarly looked around for texts but have not found any, and have not looked around online for them either due to not having the income for that

English is definitely the language of logic as I think BSDFan666 was hinting at. That said, there has to be some texts used in University Courses etc. Would be interested to know if you find anything out.

P.S.

There is a site you might want to contact the owners of. It's in french and I visit it sometimes:

I occasionally use Fortran, and Michel OLAGNON writes in French. You may not be interested in Fortran, but perhaps this is a starting point for you. He seems accessible, so he may entertain a request from you:

Thanks for all your suggestions. Right now I'm leaning towards _Principes d'implantation de Scheme et Lisp_ which is one of the recommended books (its earlier edition was called _Les Langages Lisp_) on this page: http://www.cliki.net/Favorite%20Lisp%20books Wish me luck trying to order it to the U.S.

Rick, in a couple of years if there's a new edition TCPPPL covering C++0x I think I'll follow your suggestion and update my copy to a French translation, assuming I continue to make progress.